


Take Me Under the Blue

by objectlesson



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Coming of Age, Fantasy, Fluff, M/M, Mermaid Harry, Pining, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-04-21 04:54:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14277339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: Louis hasn’t evenseenhis legs yet. He doesn’t know how they work or how long they’ll be. Maybe they won’t suit the rest of Harry at all, and he’ll have to grow into them or something. It doesn’t matter; Louis has loved Harry for a year withscales, so he can’t imagine wonky legs putting a damper on his attraction.He supposes he’ll just have to find out. In the meantime, he wonders how the fuck he got here, in his squelching wellies about to save the love of his life from the sea and take him to bed and bang him for the very first time.It’s sort of a long story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I would never, ever write a mermaid fic...but then my prompt was thigh sex on a FISHING DOCK and I just couldn't unsee the the cinematic, symbolic potential. I strongly doubt my recipient expected or wanted something this long or strange, but I couldn't help myself so I really hope you enjoy it, whoever you are. Thanks for shoving me out of my comfort zone! 
> 
> I've read very few mermaid fics so I'm not sure how tropey this. Just know there's no fish dick. Thank you to my beta, who would not have touched this if there was.

It’s cold and green and quiet, and Louis’s heart is in his throat as he trudges through the boggy mud, his wellies squelching with every step. It’s a really unsexy sound, and on top of that, his fingers are numb, and he woke up with a stress-breakout at his hairline. Needless to say, he’s feeling less than dashing. 

It’s an unfortunate way to feel on any day, but it’s especially unfortunate today because today is _the day_. The Day to end all Days. The day that Louis has been waiting for seemingly his _whole life_. The day that he gets to make his ritualistic trek down to the very private dock on the very private strip of beach that he’s been sneaking off to for an entire year and finally, _finally_ collect his boyfriend, tenderly walk him back to his house (provided his legs actually work), and then probably, hopefully fuck said boyfriend for the very first time. And no matter how unsexy the mud or the breakout or the nervy sweat collecting in his armpits is, _none of it_ is enough to take the magic out of this long-awaited moment. 

He feels like the world is watching him, the fog thick and chilly as it dampens the chirruping of the birds, waves crashing somewhere in the distance like a serenade. He thinks of Harry and his tangled curls, and his stomach plummets because _god_ , god.It’s finally happening. 

_Harry. Harry has legs_ , he thinks, shuddering, half-hard and all-embarrassing. _Harry finally has fucking legs, and you get to show him your room, your jersey collection, the view from your garden of the moors that you’re always telling him about. You get to dry him off and keep him warm and touch all that strange new skin. You get to fuck him. You get to fuck Harry._

Louis’s dizzy just thinking about it, even if it doesn’t seem _real_ yet, that Harry is no longer his biggest and strangest secret, this impossibility from another world, he’s _here_ , he’s real. About to cross the threshold between water and earth into Louis’s life, his _boring_ life, and make it less boring. Louis can hardly believe it. In fact, Louis _doesn’t_ believe it. He’s holding his breath, trying not to get ahead of himself. 

Like, it’s possible that they haven’t grown in all the way yet, or that, like, the transformation isn’t complete. Louis doesn’t _know_ because Harry doesn’t have a cell phone because cell phones can’t go into the sea. The last time he saw Harry, he was squirmy and self-conscious about his tail and wouldn’t let Louis get close enough to really look at it, but he did say, “Lou...s’happening. Like, in a few sunsets. By, erm…Friday, maybe? That’s when the half-moon is?” 

And Louis, who knows moon cycles because he’s in love with a fucking mermaid, and mermaids don’t have cell phones _or_ calendars or clocks or anything remotely useful like that, has the answer immediately, has had to learn this shit to coordinate meetings with his secret mermaid boyfriend. “Half-moon Friday,” he affirms, and Harry nods resolutely, lovely jaw clenching and glistening with sea water. 

“By the half-moon, I should look proper and not weird. So you can come then,” he says, biting back an elated, bashful grin. “And, like. Take me home.” 

_Oh, shit, oh, fuck_. Just thinking about it makes Louis swoon, makes him clutch the rucksack full of clothes he’s carrying tighter to his chest, because as much as he wants to get Harry naked, he also needs to get him back to his house safely, and it’ll be much better for them both if he's fully clothed. The joggers and hoodie are the biggest Louis has and will probably still ride a bit tight and short on Harry, but then again, Louis hasn’t even _seen_ his legs yet. He doesn’t know how they work or how long they’ll be. Maybe they won’t suit the rest of Harry at all, and he’ll have to grow into them or something. It doesn’t matter; Louis has loved Harry for a year with _scales_ , so he can’t imagine wonky legs putting a damper on his attraction. 

He supposes he’ll just have to find out. In the meantime, he wonders how the fuck he got here, in his squelching wellies about to save the love of his life from the sea and take him to bed and bang him for the very first time. 

It’s sort of a long story. 

—-

Louis meets Harry when he’s eighteen, a bit spotty, and only 95 percent sure that he’s gay, although no one but he and his mum know this. 

One lonely Saturday, when he’s crawling out of his skin and woefully behind on homework, he decides to escape the house and take Ted, the rambunctious, tragically stupid, but very good-hearted family Labrador, out for a walk. It’s a long, chilly walk, and Louis spends the duration of it contemplating whether he’s _actually_ gay or just insanely picky about girls. Because the thing is, he hasn’t liked a real, honest-to-god boy. He thinks boys are fit, but they’re all footie players and musicians, and some of those musicians wear eyeliner, so maybe he’s just…confused. After all, he's had girlfriends, and even if he never really liked any of _them_ either, at least he wasn't completely useless around them. He could kiss them and hold their hands without them noticing he wasn’t totally into It. He just doesn't know. 

As he kicks along the cold, rocky stretch of beach that no one ever goes to because northern beaches are shit, Ted races ahead of him, chasing seagulls. Louis finds himself wishing that he _could_ have a crush on a real boy, just so he could _know_ for sure. He wishes some ridiculously hot, unattainable guy would transfer to his school. He wishes David Beckham or Billie Joe Armstrong would just materialize here, on this beach, so he could see if his stomach flips over, if it’s different in person. He wishes, and he wishes, and Ted suddenly erupts in a gale of furious, excited barking. 

Louis jogs unsteadily up the beach to catch up to him, eyes scrunched shut against the frigid, salty breeze. Ted’s standing on a rickety-looking fishing dock, tail wagging so quickly that it’s practically a blur. Louis carefully picks his way down the weathered boards, thrilled to know that they’re stronger than they seem, sun-bleached and wind-beaten to a silver smoothness, as he asks, “What is it, mate? An animal or…oh.” 

And it’s not David Beckham, and it’s not Billie Joe, but _Jesus Christ_ , is Louis gay. He’s so gay. He’s incredibly gay, and incredibly certain of that gayness, because clinging to the edge of the dock with strong, pale arms, hair slicked to his brow and black with sea water, is a _boy_. A really, really hot boy, with big plush lips and shiny white teeth that flash and glisten as he grins at Ted, offering a broad-knuckled, distinctly teenage hand up for him to lick. 

Louis freezes. It’s clear that he and his radiant gayness haven’t been spotted yet, so he just stands there watching this gorgeous boy, who’s likely about his age, tread water and pet his dog. 

He must be, like, an Olympic swimmer because Louis can’t imagine why else anyone would be swimming in the fucking _sea_ in this weather, half-naked and apparently not bothered by the cold at all, like a shark or something. It would also explain why this boy has such astoundingly attractive, broad, well-muscled shoulders. Louis stares, thinking with dual relief and horror, _I’m gay. The gayest boy who ever lived. Behold my blinding, paralyzing gayness._

And in that moment, Ted stops his frantic slobbering all over this boy’s sea-salty hand and turns to Louis in excitement, clearly thrilled to introduce his new friend to his old (very gay) friend. Louis flinches as the boy looks at him with bright, unearthly green eyes (Louis never even _notices_ the colour of people’s eyes, but _boy_ is he noticing this particular shade of green) before he gasps and ducks under the water as if he had never been there at all. 

Louis claps his hand over his mouth as that dark head disappears under darker water, a swirl of foam all that remains of the single most attractive teenage Olympic swimmer Louis has ever seen. “Wait!” he yells stupidly, as if anyone could hear someone yelling at them when they’re underwater. He stumbles to the edge of the dock and peers over it, Ted weaving between his legs and whining, and there he stands, waiting for this boy to surface so that he can apologize for interrupting his Olympic swim practice with his terrible, gay spying. 

He waits. And he waits. And the boy never comes back. 

Louis wonders briefly if he imagined the whole thing out of a fierce, consuming desire for clarity regarding his sexuality but decides it doesn’t matter because the consequence of wondering too long could be that the new love of his life might _drown_. Plus, Ted is slowly dissolving, his whines getting higher and more plaintive until they start morphing into sharply pitched, anxious barks. Ted doesn’t want the boy to drown any more than Louis does. 

Louis makes a perhaps rash decision, strips down to his pants in three seconds flat, and jumps into the freezing water to rescue the fittest and apparently worst Olympic swimmer the world has ever seen. 

The second he hits the water, though, he knows he has made a grave mistake. It isn’t just freezing, it’s, like, _solid_ and freezing, and it hits him like a fist, robbing him of all his breath in a single moment, rendering him half-dead as soon as he plunges beneath the surface. His limbs are too cold to move, his breath completely gone, and just like that, minutes after realizing he really _is_ gay, he’s drowning. Just sinking like a stone while his dog is reduced to hysterics on the dock. 

Louis’s lashes flutter as he recovers enough to flail desperately toward the glowing light above him. He just, like, _needs to breathe_ before he tries to rescue anyone, but before he can even properly make it to an oxygen source, a pair of big, improbably warm hands are gripping his waist, hauling him upward. Static explodes behind his eyelids, and he’s seconds away from properly losing consciousness when he surfaces, sputtering. 

There’s an unfairly hot, concerned-looking boy palming all over him in the water, pushing his slick hair from his eyes, gasping along with him. “Oh, god, please breathe,” sexy swimmer boy begs, and Louis thinks _at least my sexuality crisis slash confirmation is alive and well_ before he sort of blacks out, something slick and scaly and strong smoothing past his limp legs. 

He wakes up on the shore, rocks digging into his side while he pukes sea water. It’s probably the least romantic thing in the world, but it doesn’t deter a very bewildered-looking teenage Olympian from lying on top of him, eyes bright and entirely too green as he blurts, “Yes! You’re alive...good! Now don’t move.” 

“I was supposed to save _you_ ,” Louis wheezes, letting his muscles go slack because, really, why struggle when someone handsome is lying on top of you, the tide is licking at your toes, and you’re so very gay that it nearly killed you. Ted bolts over to licks Louis’s face, and he shoves him off, groaning, “Gross...stop, boy.” 

“It’s a dog, right? I’ve never seen a dog before...except in books. It’s nice...and loud,” the boy babbles, and Louis must be suffering from water damage because _what is this guy talking about?_ Also, he’s even more beautiful up close. Pale, glistening skin that almost glitters, tousled curly hair drying in salt-crusted brown ringlets around his shoulders, those green, green eyes, green like candy apples, green like grassy hills glinting under sunshine. Louis shivers as he _thinks_ of sunshine because, _god,_ is he cold. At least all the places where their skin is touching is warm; this boy is somehow burning up like a furnace, heating Louis where they’re pressed flush, at least. 

“Why have...why have you never seen a dog...be...fore,” Louis shivers through the violent chattering of his teeth, stomach flipping over as the boy scoots up the length of his body, pressing the whole of their torsos together, so much wet, slick skin _touching_. It’s way too much for someone who’s just realized that he’s officially gay. Louis’s about to go into cardiac arrest. 

“You’re cold,” the boy observes, looking concerned, touching Louis’s forehead with his long, hot fingers like he's taking his temperature. “My body heat should help. Should warm you up. Get closer.” 

“This…this cannot be happening,” Louis mumbles through gritted teeth. “Sorry I fucked up your workout.” 

“My what?” the boy asks, quirking his cute, sea-mussed eyebrows up and regarding Louis with genuine confusion, hands smoothing the length of Louis’s shivery arms like he doesn’t think it’s weird _at all_ to feel up a half-drowned stranger that he just rescued from the water. “You didn’t fuck _anything_ up. M’the one who’s, like. Lying here on a human out in the open and seeing a _dog_. I’d be in _so much trouble_ if anyone knew. See, we’re not supposed to talk to humans until we have legs,” he explains, as if this is common knowledge and Louis should know exactly what he's talking about. 

Perhaps the hypothermia and the gay revelation are going to Louis’s head because, like, _nothing_ this very attractive boy is saying makes any fucking sense at all. “Until you…until you have legs? Do you not have legs now? Because, like. You were swimming until you drowned and I saved you. Or you saved me. I dunno because I sort of feel like I may have passed out.” 

“Nah, I have a tail,” the boy says easily, and quite suddenly, there it is. A giant, pink-scaled, frilly, fish-looking thing that he’s raising behind himself like a great, lovely, entirely terrifying fan. Louis’s heart stops. “M’not human like you. Humans call us merpeople, supposedly.” 

Louis doesn't know if he passed out earlier, but he passes out now. Just totally loses it, his vision whiting out with static as he slips into some other plane of existence because _of course_ he would fall in love at first sight with a fucking _mermaid boy_. Merman. Whatever this guy is, with his pretty hair and pretty eyes and—Louis can’t even believe he’s _thinking this_ —pretty _tail_. Of course. Of course he’s not just gay, he’s gay _and_ he has a mermaid fetish. _But he’s so, so fit_ is the last thing Louis thinks before consciousness slips from him entirely. 

When Louis comes to again, Ted’s lying defeatedly on the beach, warm and wet near Louis’s cold feet, and the mermaid boy—mer _man_ —has his face so fucking close to Louis’s that he’s nothing but a blurry, many-eyed shape. “You’re a mermaid?” he blurts, and the boy yelps, reeling back for a second before throwing his arms around Louis’s prone body and squeezing him so hard that he might black out again for another second or two. 

“Oh, god, I thought you _died_! Then I really, really would have been in trouble. Killing humans is, like…the worst thing you can do,” he explains, voice muffled against Louis’s chest, which is rabbiting so fiercely in time with Louis’s heart that he’d be embarrassed if he weren’t so preoccupied with the _more_ embarrassing fact that he’s, like, freezing cold and nearly dead and _still_ has a partial hard-on because he's _that_ gay. “I’m so glad that you’re alive,” the mermaid boy tells him with genuine enthusiasm, right as Louis coughs up even more water in lieu of a witty response. 

“Do you need mouth-to-mouth?” the boy asks shyly, after Louis finally quits hacking. 

Louis’s heart jumps as he manages to sputter, “ _No_ , no. Thank you, though. You’re very nice. Sorry I keep, like…vomiting on you and passing out and all…s’just I’ve never seen a mermaid, yeah? Merman, sorry.” 

“Mermaid is fine,” the boy giggles, grinning a spectacularly white smile and swishing his spectacular tail in the air. It’s pinkish like the red snapper Louis once saw at a sushi place in London, and yep, it really exists, he didn't dream that. “You’re taking this quite well. I thought you might scream and run away.” 

“Well. M’legs are sort of not working,” Louis notes, furrowing his brow before adding, “M’sorry if that was, like…insensitive. Since you don’t have them at all. Erm, I have no idea what the, like, _etiquette_ for this scenario is. I’ve never met a mermaid.” 

“Actually, you probably have,” the boy replies mysteriously, twirling a dark curl around his finger and regarding Louis with a very sincere expression. “Lots of people you probably think are humans are just mermaids with legs.” 

“Ah, I see,” Louis nods slowly, trying not to stare too hard at this boy’s _mouth_ when he talks, his soft, pink, wide mouth that would be very good for kissing if, like, it were appropriate for Louis to kiss a guy with a fishtail who keeps saying nonsensical things. “This is all…a lot for me to process.” 

“Of course,” the boy gasps, clapping a hand over that terrible mouth, saving Louis the pain of having to ogle it for one more second. Instead, he looks at his collar bones, which are just as beautiful but slightly less distracting. “I also shouldn't be telling you any of this,” the boy mumbles behind his palm. “Forget I ever said any of it. I’ll probably never see you again, anyway,” he adds glumly then, pouting. “A shame. I like you and your dog.” 

Louis _knows_ that he doesn't mean he _likes him_ likes him; after all, this boy is a magical mermaid, totally gorgeous, and probably _not_ a fraction as gay as Louis is. But still. A sensation zings up Louis’s spine and settles in his gut, making his stomach drop before it turns. He thought he had been mostly successful in willing his boner away, but he’s less sure now. “I mean, why not? I’d like to learn more about mermaid culture. And you, like, saved my life...don't I owe you something?” he asks awkwardly, suddenly feeling self-conscious about the fact that he’s lying half-naked and wet on a rocky-ass beach, half-drowned, while someone _inhuman and probably perfect_ lies on top of him, examining all his human flaws. He feels weak and gross and turned on, so, naturally, he also feels embarrassed. 

“Like what?” the boy asks, chewing his horrible, wonderful lower lip. Louis wants to touch it. He wants to cup the boy’s pretty face in his hands, thumb into the soft, flushed curves of his cheeks, and mouth over the cut of his jaw. The boy can’t be more than seventeen years old, soft and round-faced and angular, hard edges showing through boyish softness. Louis wants to _know_ him, even if he's dreaming this whole thing up (which is very likely). He wants to know his dream boy. 

“I dunno. Like, something about yourself...your name. How old you are. In human years, not mermaid years,” Louis jokes, feeling weird and wild and nervous and confused. 

“Erm…alright then,” the boy starts cautiously, reaching up and playing with Louis’s hair a bit, smoothing curious fingers down his neck to his sternum, where he drums them idly. Louis isn’t sure whether to rejoice or weep over the apparent fact that mermaids care very little for personal space. “M’sixteen...human years and mermaid years are the same. We actually study and borrow a lot from human culture because we eventually…well. Nevermind, m’not supposed to talk about that bit. And…my name is too hard for you to pronounce, probably, and I haven’t chosen a human one yet, so. Yeah.” 

Louis’s head is spinning. He can’t believe that any of this is happening, that this boy is so pretty and magical yet dorky and _kind_ , continuing to chat with Louis even though they’re lying on a frozen beach, and human/mermaid interaction is supposedly, like, weird and forbidden, if he’s gathered anything from this exchange. He feels like he won a prize but that he also must be cursed because who the fuck falls in love with a _mermaid boy three seconds after meeting him?_ “Well,” Louis says after a moment, chewing at his lip, perhaps a bit coyly, because he's pretty sure that he can get away with flirting and having it be read as general friendliness, considering this guy is just _lounging on him_ like he’s a sofa. “What should I call you?” 

“Erm...H? It’s sort of the closest English sound to my name,” he explains. “And what should I call you? How old are you? What’s your dog’s name, and how old is it?” 

Louis giggles at the wild absurdity of this, the salt-wind, the seagulls circling overhead, the sand in his hair, the ache in his back, and the _boy_ on his _body_. “I’m Louis, m’eighteen,” he offers, before freeing one of his legs from under the weird, slick-sticky weight of H’s _tail_ so that he can poke Ted with his toes. “And this is Ted...he’s eight. Sort of an older gentleman, for a dog.” 

“Louis, Louis, Louis,” the boy repeats over and over again, like he enjoys having the word in his mouth, like it feels good just to say it. Something about the intent in his low, even voice, the deliberateness of it, makes Louis feel hot all over, even though he's probably gonna die of frostbite. “Louis...that’s so nice.” 

“You’re so nice,” Louis replies automatically, like _your mom’s so nice_ , but softer because he doesn’t know if mermaids have moms or if they’re born from eggs, and he, like…doesn’t want to be rude. 

H beams, smiling big and unabashedly, and Louis wants to lick the sea-salt from his dimples. “You’re so nice...wish I could talk to you every day. Wish I could see you again.” 

“I mean, you could, though,” Louis blurts, shrugging and instantly regretting it as his shoulders drag against the rocks. He winces before adding, “I mean, I know you aren’t technically supposed to, but you could just…I dunno. Do it anyway. I won’t tell anyone...s’not like I know any mermaids I could rat you out to.” 

“You’d really want to?” H asks, raising his brows. “This whole thing isn’t too weird for you?” 

“Oh, it’s very weird, but I like that...m’weird, too. And my life is dreary and boring, so this is, like, one of the coolest… _best_ things that’s ever happened to me,” he tacks on awkwardly. It makes H flush, which is wonderful. He wants to make mermaid boys flush all the time. 

“Okay,” he says then, _finally_ rolling off Louis and smoothing sand off his tail. “I have to get back...I’ve been gone _way_ too long, but tomorrow, maybe, I’ll see you here by the dock again?” 

“I’d like that,” Louis tells him, eyes wide as he watches H clumsily lumber toward the sea, using his tail as a weird sort of mono-leg muscle thing, his pink and silver scales flashing beautifully in the moonlight. It shouldn’t be sexy, watching a half-fish flop around, but he’s also half-boy and absurdly fit, and Louis has an honest-to-god crush on him, so he tries not to feel reflexively hormonally drawn in by it. He disappears into the surf, but his curly head quickly pops up again as he calls out over the crash of the waves, “I’d like that, too!”

Louis waits until he can’t see the motion of H’s tail propelling him through the current anymore to stand on shivery legs and hobble over to the dock to retrieve his clothes. He waits until he’s already halfway home before letting out a triumphant _whoop_ and flailing as he punches the air because he's pretty sure that he, like, _asked a boy out on a date_ only minutes after fully realizing and accepting that he’s gay, which has to be some sort of Gay World Record or something. 

The boy might be a mermaid and he definitely has a tail, but Louis can work with that. Or at least he's willing to try. 

—-

Louis spends the whole night wondering if he’s crazy. He’s not sure yet if this is an improvement upon wondering if he’s gay. 

While he washes the dishes and braids his little sisters’ hair before bed so they'll wake up with crimps, he thinks of his strange, magical encounter on the beach and asks himself if it really, _actually_ happened. If it’s even possible for mermaids to exist. He thinks up a whole list of questions to ask H tomorrow afternoon (provided he’s real and not a figment of Louis’s boy-thirsty imagination or whatever), questions like, _So how do you breathe underwater without gills?_ and, _What is this bit about legs and growing them...is that something that happens to all mermaids? Or did I invent it because I want to introduce you to me mum and I can’t if you’re in the sea all the time?_ and, _Do you have, like…parts?_ Louis keeps himself up all night, imagining this boy’s smooth, fever-hot skin slick with sea water, the pretty pink hue of his scales, silver under the white, foggy sky. 

He knows it’s probably weird to lust after a guy’s _tail_ , but, like. Louis’s gay, and this boy was so nice and sweet and handsome, and he, like, saved Louis’s life. He thinks he’s allowed a little bit of weirdness after his near-death experience. 

The following day, Louis tries to prepare himself for an empty beach and a lifetime of awful scale fetishes and broken hearts. Thank god, Ted barks at the surf for a few minutes, racing from one end of the dock to another, and eventually, H’s curly, dark head pokes out of the waves like Ariel. 

Louis wants to cry. Instead, he scoots to the edge of the dock, chinos cuffed around his cold ankles as he shivers, to watch H swim closer and then shake out his hair like a dog. “Hi,” he says, heart leaping into his throat. 

He learns that mermaid biology is way more complicated than gills, that not all mermaids grow legs—only about 70 percent of them do, the ones who reach a pubescent state when their tails split and grow into human legs around age seventeen or eighteen. He learns these mermaids return to the sea every few years to _spawn_ like salmon, which should be gross but isn’t because H is telling him about it, and H is so absurdly fit that he could talk about the nastiest thing in the world, and Louis would still want to kiss all over the broad, solid stretch of his shoulders. _How do baby mermaids get raised, then?_ he asks, rapt, and Harry giggles like he's absurd for being so ignorant and tells him, _well, the other 30 percent are caregiver types. They don’t grow legs, they stay in the water their whole lives. I sort of used to wish I was one…I love babies and the sea. But after yesterday, m’happy I’ll get legs eventually_ , and that shouldn’t make Louis’s heart thrill so much, but it _does_. He really, really hopes Harry is grateful for legs because of him. That he’s so interesting and perhaps handsome that this boy wants to walk, one day. He hopes so, anyway. 

H asks questions, too. He wants to know about school and Louis’s sisters and Ted, who eventually stops barking and gets bored, wandering off to dig up the beach and race up and down the shore with driftwood in his mouth. Louis answers everything patiently, loving how strange and simple and full of _wonder_ this boy is, with his wide hands clenched on sun-grey wood, thumbs fitting themselves into weathered divots, eyes wide as Louis talks about school, which should be the most boring thing in the world but apparently isn’t. 

Eventually the sun starts to sink, and Louis gets colder and colder, so they decide to part ways, even though it’s pretty clear that neither of them wants to, each wrapped up in the other’s world. Louis floats back to his house on air, dreaming of the shape of Harry’s lips as he throws his head back to laugh and thinking about what it might feel like to thumb along that mysterious place on his lower back, where soft, pale skin gives way to scales. What that slickness becoming slicker might feel like under his mouth. Under his tongue. These are the horrible things he thinks about as he drifts off into an uneasy sleep. 

Weeks pass like this, Louis sneaking down to the beach after class and waiting on the dock for H to appear. He learns a lot about mermaids, and in turn, he shares a lot about humans, which he never thought were worth talking about, really, but here he is, knees warm under H’s hot, wide palms as they rest over the jut of the joint, using Louis’s body to anchor himself against the current. Louis stays hyperfocused on the place where they’re joined, breath catching every time H squeezes idly, digging his thumbs in to stabilize. 

He pretends to be grossed out the first time he accidentally touches H’s tail, but in reality, he saves the scales that come off on his fingers, wiping them into his pockets and turning the fabric inside out once he’s home to lovingly pick them off and carefully, carefully place them inside a crumpled envelope to save. It’s proof that this boy is real when Louis’s lying in bed and feeling uncertain, like he’s dreamed up the solution to his loneliness, someone so magical that he doesn’t have to look anymore. 

By the end of the month, Louis’s in love, and he doesn't even fucking _care_ how absurd it is. 

This boy is fit and funny, and he has an amazing laugh, loud and unashamed and sort of goose-like and adorable, and Louis _wants him_. Wants to bite the broad, pink splay of his mouth, wants to lie entwined with him while the tide laps at his bare toes, wants to feel the large, strange weight of his well-muscled tail trapping him against the beach. He wants all sorts of things, and he can’t even care if it’s weird or not, he can’t even _wonder_. Love is an irrational thing; it rushes up Louis’s throat and chokes him like a flood, like sea foam. It doesn’t matter that H is only half-human or perhaps not even human at all. That he coughs without covering his mouth, that his scales feel weird and slippery and frightening, sort of metallic, like crushed butterfly wings, iridescent under the glow of Louis’s bedside lamp as he steals glances at the ones he’s taken home. Louis loves him all the same. 

On Monday, he brings _Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone_ to read to H, who wants to know the sorts of books Louis read as a kid. This is of course his favourite, even if he's supposed to have outgrown it by now. H loves it, though, so it becomes a habit. 

Louis takes great pleasure in sitting on the sun-smooth boards while H lounges beside him, tail swishing through the waves as they lap up against the side of the dock, droplets of sea drying between his shoulder blades. Louis wants to kiss down his spine, wants to rest his cheek on that liminal stretch between worlds where Harry’s skin becomes silvery with scales. Instead, he thumbs through his book to find where he last left off, the spine creased in so many places that he keeps thinking he’s found it, even though he hasn’t. Then, he reads and he reads, about a world that is magic to both of them. 

True to his nerdy, theatre-kid spirit, Louis does voices for everyone and gesticulates with a free hand, and H _loves_ it, giggling and gasping at all the right places. And it’s _fun_ to tell these stories to someone who has never heard them before, to watch the genuine surprise and betrayal flashing in H’s eyes when Draco turns out to be a racist little shit, or when it’s revealed that Quirrell is actually carrying Lord Voldemort on his _head_. H is shocked and delighted, and it makes Louis feel young, like he’s _brilliant_ , like he wrote this book himself. Or maybe that’s just what it’s like to be in love, to feel like every single thing is new. 

Louis is mere chapters away from finishing the first book in its entirety when H interrupts him, reaching out and tapping him gently on the thigh, making his heart stop, his skin crawl. They’ve been seeing each other for months now, and H is _always_ touchy, but still, Louis hasn’t gotten used to the way it makes him feel like the world is ending at the same time he's being reborn. “I think that should be my human name,” H offers nonsensically, voice reduced to a murmur since his cheek and consequently his huge mouth is resting on his elbow. “I need one anyway. And I like it.” 

“A what? Which name?” Louis asks, bewildered still by the heat of unexpected touch. “What are you on about?” 

“ _Harry_ ,” H says impatiently, gesturing in the space between them before letting his hand flop back down into Louis’s lap. “S’my new name. Starts with H. So, you can call me Harry.” 

“ _Harry_?!” Louis yelps, making a face, trying hard not to let his eyes linger too long at the dip of H’s back as he stretches facedown along the dock, tail bent in a loose parabola over his torso as he bends it lazily, curling. He knows he shouldn’t feel this way, but Louis feels like he shouldn’t _look_ at Harry’s tail, like staring is rude or invasive, focusing on this thing that makes them different. It’s hard not to, though, when Harry waves it around like this. “Why Harry? He’s a whiny twat.” 

“No, he’s not!” H replies defensively, rolling over onto his back and further distracting Louis, who blinks at the pink indented lines on his chest created by the slats between the dock boards, the fresh stripes on his skin. Harry scratches at his underarm hair and adds, “Harry’s the hero. And he has green eyes. It’s a good name.” 

“M’sorry, it’s a lovely name,” Louis assures him gently, realizing that he’s being weird, that his eyes are lingering on Harry's puffy brown nipples too long, that he’s really the _worst_ about staring. “S’just...Harry’s, like, not my favourite character. You’ll be an improvement upon his name.” 

Harry furrows his brow, genuinely confused. “Who's _your_ favourite character, then?” 

“Hermione,” Louis answers easily, shrugging, because it’s the obviously correct answer. “She’s badass.” 

“Oh, right,” Harry pouts, sounding very glum. “You _would_ like her best. Because she’s a girl...and human boys are only allowed to like girls because you guys are, like, a primitive species.” 

Louis is _shocked_. First off, Harry has never, _ever_ sounded bitter about _anything_ , but he certainly sounds bitter about _this_ , whatever it is. Second off, _are they about to have the long-awaited mermaid sexuality discussion?!_ Because Louis’s not ready. He’s been preparing late at night in front of the mirror since the day he _met_ Harry, but _still_ , he isn’t ready. “ _What?!_ ” he gasps, voice sharp and wobbly all at once. 

“M’sorry,” Harry apologizes automatically, sitting up and scooting to the edge of the dock on his arse like he’s about to get back in the water, and _no_ , Louis doesn’t want that, so he grabs his arm at the elbow and holds him fast, heart pounding. 

“Hey, no, m’not mad, I just wanna know what you mean,” he manages to get out in a breathless rush as Harry shrinks away, shaking his head and flinging drips everywhere like a dog. 

“No, that was unfair. I just...I forget, sometimes, that humans are, like…sort of rigid about, like… rules. We don’t have...you’re supposed to like girls, right, because you’re a boy?” Harry asks, eyes wet and glistening as he looks up at Louis, cringing, like he’d rather not have this talk. Before Louis can answer, he adds, “It’s not important with merpeople. Part of why I didn’t care that you called me a mermaid instead of a merman, or whatever, is that gender matters less than, like, if you’ll eventually get legs or not, whether you’ll stay in the sea,” he clumsily explains. “But you guys care a lot. And yeah.” 

“Harry,” Louis says gently, trying on the new name and really liking it, the way it feels to say it, soft and private, like a flame cupped between his palms, protected from the wind. “Boys can like other boys. That’s not why Hermione is my favourite…I just think she’s cool.” 

“I know they _can_ ,” Harry grumbles, making a face like he’s being condescended to, tail splashing impatiently in the water where the fan of it skims the waves. “But it’s, like…not as common or accepted, or something.” 

“Well...yeah. Sort of, like, an awful bloke might punch you if you go talking about it in the wrong village, but it’s getting better. I would know...I like boys,” he confesses, cheeks heating up spectacularly as it all just tumbles out of him, as he tells the first person since his mum. “M’gay.” 

Harry wavers, blinking fiercely and pursing his lips before chewing the bottom one nervously, “Oh,” he whispers before he looks down, fiddling with a curl and tucking it behind his ear nervously. “That’s...that’s good.” 

It doesn’t sound good. He still sounds glum, and Louis _hates_ it, wants his odd, cheerful boy back, the one who cackles madly at everything Ron says, who plays with the hem of Louis’s hoodie while he reads. Who touches him unapologetically because apparently mermaids don’t have _homophobia_ in their society, or whatever. Louis wants to know what’s wrong, what this means, so he very carefully ventures, “Must suck, then. To leave somewhere that’s nice and accepting about that stuff and come up here, where we have primitive twats.” 

Harry shrugs but doesn’t say anything, just sits there with his sad, slouchy shoulders, sloshing water back and forth with his tail, expression muted and thoughtful. Then, he sits up straight and rounds on Louis, eyes narrowed. “Did you know that once we get our legs and come ashore, some merpeople end up, like...dating and falling in love with and even marrying humans?” he asks almost defiantly, like he’s expecting Louis to say it’s disgusting, like he’s daring him to get up and leave.

“Erm,” Louis stammers, stunned, heart stopping before it’s reduced to a frantic, chaotic thud. It’s still frigid outside, growing colder as the sun drops along the horizon and the light gets scarce and orange, but he’s sweating so suddenly, so _much_. And the last thing he wants to do is leave. “I _didn’t_ know...but I’m happy to know.” 

“Why?” Harry presses, and it’s baited, it’s loaded. He wants Louis to tell him the truth, and Louis can’t deny Harry something he wants; he’s pretty sure that’s impossible.

“Well, for one, it makes me feel less awful about wanting to kiss you all the time,” he admits very quietly, eyes dropping to his lap because he can’t look at him right now, he can hardly breathe. 

Harry makes a wordless sound. “You...you do?” he asks then, hand flying to his lips, as if he can’t imagine Louis wanting to kiss them. 

“You haven't noticed me, like… _ogling_ you all the time?” Louis asks incredulously, shifting minimally closer, wanting the terrible, improbable heat of Harry’s body, wanting to burn up in it. Wanting his palms decoupaged in scales.

“I thought you thought…I don’t know. Gross. Or maybe interesting, like a butterfly,” Harry babbles. 

“Butterflies are pretty,” Louis reminds him. 

“They’re pretty, but they’re still a bug. Sometimes they land on the water and drown and float down to us, their wings all water-logged and dull, and they aren’t pretty anymore, they’re creepy. They have a long, curly mouth-straw. They aren’t _sexy_ , and I’d never want to kiss one,” Harry gets out in a rush, and _oh_ , oh. Maybe Louis sorely misjudged this one. Maybe Harry was just lamenting human prejudice and wasn’t actually sad at all, maybe this has nothing to do with Louis, and he’s totally freaked out. Maybe _Louis_ is the butterfly, with his curly mouth-straw. 

He feels awful and recoils, cheeks getting even hotter with mortification layered on top of nerves. “Fuck. I’m sorry, I thought…I messed up and thought maybe you thought about kissing me, too. We’re similar enough that I didn’t think too much about us being different, or that _you_ might be grossed out by _me_ , and—“ 

“No, no, no,” Harry cries frantically, his eyes wide and pupils dark in the split-second Louis dares himself to look at him. “God. Sorry! M’the worst and so awkward, _I’m_ the butterfly, I’m...fuck. Louis, I think about kissing you every second. You’re so hard to look at, it makes me, like, _ill_ ,” he stammers, clapping his hands over his mouth and making a horrified expression. “IN A GOOD WAY, god, I shouldn’t talk!” 

“You should let me kiss you,” Louis suggests in a hoarse, shaky voice, stunned by himself, by the way he's leaning forward, meeting Harry where he’s at, book sliding from his lap as he rises to his knees. “Yeah?” 

Harry’s eyes are wide, wet enough to dive into, so Louis does, cupping Harry’s face gently with a tremulous hand, fingers curling into his warm, damp hair and pulling him closer until their lips press together, everything soft until Harry gasps and Louis’s tongue flicks its way inside his mouth because there isn’t a single thing he can do to stop the tide. 

Harry tastes like salt. Salt and sun, even though the sun has already set. Salt and stars, even though they aren’t quite out yet. He tastes like another world, and Louis’s going to fucking drown in him. He’s capsizing, and they're tangling together, his hands all over the broad stretch of Harry’s shoulders, thumbs digging into soft skin and relenting muscle as he thinks, _want to take you apart, want your tail between my legs._

Harry whimpers and suddenly there’s brackish water on his face, and it takes Louis a few seconds to realize that it’s too warm to be sea water. He pulls back, gasping, and asks, “Are you…is this okay? I didn’t hurt you, did I?” 

Harry sniffles and wipes his eyes on Louis’s sweatshirt, fingers snagging through his hair. “M’just happy,” he whispers with a watery smile, trembling lips swollen from Louis’s teeth. “I thought...I thought you’d never want me like this, spent all this time wishing I had met you when I _already_ had legs, so you never had to see my tail. Didn’t think you’d like me knowing that I wasn’t properly human. I just. I feel special n’lucky...and...stuff.” 

“You _are_ special, and I like you so much,” Louis whispers back, breathlessly, into the panting heat of Harry’s mouth, licking his lips before biting them, amazed at the softness, the give. The way he burns and stings, salt getting into every wind-worn and chapped bit of him. “I like you just like this. I mean, I’ll like you when you have legs, too, of course. But this is fine. I think you’re so fit. I think your tail is so pretty.” 

Harry sobs messily, and Louis silences him with a kiss. 

They snog until Louis can’t stop shivering in the oncoming dusk, and Harry’s tail is so restless that it keeps thumping down on the dock, twisting off it and cutting through the water like the sail of an overturned boat. Louis’s cold, but Harry’s warm, and he just wants more kisses, endless kisses, his hair getting softer and fluffier between Louis’s worrying fingers as it dries. “It’s about to be dark,” Harry murmurs at some point, hands moving restlessly under Louis’s hoodie, climbing the ladder of his spine. “But I don't want you to go back. When you're gone, I wonder if I’ve dreamt you up.” 

“Same,” Louis rasps, hands creeping down Harry’s waist to that strange junction, the swell of his hips, boyish and soft before the lean stretch of scales. “I…this is weird, but sometimes your scales come off when I touch you, and I look at them when I’m home to know that you’re real. It’s nice. To know.” 

Harry squirms, sighing. “I’m sorry, that’s probably gross,” he tells Louis quietly, pulling away a bit before Louis drags him back, hands sliding lower.

“No, no, it’s not. I told you, your tail…I _like_ it. You’re so fit, every bit of you, yeah?” Louis whispers, voice trapped and urgent against the soft, frantic beat of Harry’s pulse. “I want…I want to touch it. Like, really touch it. Unless that hurts or something, I don’t know.” 

“It doesn’t hurt,” Harry assures him, taking Louis’s hand and gingerly pushing it down below the curve of his hip, where his quads would be if he had quads. Instead, there’s just a flat, smooth plane of muscle, taut and flickering under Louis’s tentative palm. Louis gasps, thinking this is the most insane, intimate way that he’s ever touched someone. “Will you still be attracted to me when it’s gone, and I just look human?” Harry asks, biting his lip. 

“I will always be attracted to you,” Louis confesses, thinking quite sincerely that there’s no way in which Harry could possibly change that wouldn’t still tug at his heart, tug _lower_ , in the very pit of his stomach. His attraction seems cosmic, organic, well beyond anything he could logically explain or rationalize. With his brow pressed to Harry’s, the sun reduced to only a sliver of bright orange between two craggy bluffs in the distance, Louis thumbs the scales against the grain experimentally, breath catching as Harry tenses, fire and fear in his eyes. “And when you have legs,” he murmurs, very quietly, “I presume you’ll have…other things. That I don’t know if you have now.” 

“I have…I’m not _actually_ a fish, Louis,” Harry grumbles, mouth turning down at the corners into a delicate, lovely pout. “But it’s…y’know. Different. Not sure how it would work, really, with you, plus m’shy about it?” 

“I could work with whatever you have, I swear,” Louis promises, meaning it, mind a mess of images, fantasies, things he’d never thought he could get off to before. But Harry changes everything, changes the _world_. Louis’s certain he could get behind any fathomable anatomical variation Harry might be equipped with, that’s just what _happens_ when you’re in love with a magical boy who kisses like the entire sea. “But I’m also happy to wait. Until it’s something more familiar.” 

“I’d feel better about that,” Harry says evenly, fitting himself into Louis’s searching hand, the texture of him smooth and prickly, depending on how Louis shifts the pressure. It’s strange and wonderful, and Louis’s so in love that he feels dizzy with it, like he’s floating and the tide could just take him away. Like he could breathe underwater, he wants this all so very, very badly. 

“I have to go,” Harry tells him, voice sluggish with regret. “I’ve never stayed out this late before…gotta think of an excuse while I swim home.” 

“Steal Harry Potter plot points, it’s what I always do,” Louis jokes, sitting up before he thinks better of it, pressing heavy, lingering goodbye kisses all over Harry’s neck, his clavicles. “I wish I had scales to give you,” he adds, admiring the rose-silver shimmer dappling his palm. 

“What about this?” Harry asks, hooking his finger into the neck of Louis’s hoodie and fishing out the necklace that he’s wearing. “I could borrow it. I’ll keep it safe.” 

It’s just a simple bathtub chain with a paper airplane charm on it, something Louis found forgotten in the loo at school a few weeks ago and decided to put on, an act of willful defiance, of choice. It wasn’t long after meeting Harry and realizing that he was gay, and wearing necklaces was always something he thought he could never do because it _marked_ him, declared him as other. But he’s different now; love has changed him, he’s other, and he doesn’t care who knows, he’s in love with not only a boy but a fucking _mermaid_ boy, so yeah. He decided he was gonna wear jewelry, it wasn’t gonna matter, and he hadn’t taken the necklace off since. But he takes it off now, before putting it over Harry’s head. 

“Looks better on you anyway,” he smiles at him, kissing the corner of Harry’s mouth. “You can have it.” 

And as Louis walks home in the darkness, he steals glance after glance at his glimmering palm as it catches moonlight and streetlight, counting each little bit he’s stolen from Harry, each tiny proof that he’s real, that he's his. His heart soars, his stomach drops, and he has to keep adjusting himself in his chinos, but he doesn’t feel even remotely guilty for it, he cares about nothing save for the fact that Harry kissed him back, wants him back, has his necklace floating around his pretty neck as he swims. Louis smiles uncontrollably with stinging, swollen lips and dreams of tomorrow. 

—-

It takes them much longer to get through _The Chamber of Secrets_ because now they snog at least twice as much as Louis actually reads. He’s not complaining, though; he could literally kiss Harry and his wide, giving mouth forever. He loves to kiss him fast and rough with teeth and tongue until they both pull away gasping, Louis hard in his jeans and Harry having to get back into the water, cheeks flushed, hair a wreck. And he loves to kiss him slowly while they spread out together on the dock, his hands touching Harry wherever he can reach, fingers slotting against his ribs, one leg thrown over the strong bulk of his tail, lips trailing down the column of his throat, the heaving plane of his sternum. He loves kissing Harry hello, breathless from having run down the beach because walking seems to take too long, throwing his book bag down before lowering himself to his stomach and reaching for Harry, cupping his sea-slick cheeks just as he breaches the water and presses their wet, hungry mouths together. He even loves kissing him goodbye, although it’s harder than anything else, drawn out and aching and sometimes nearly impossible to wrench away from, like their arms are too tangled to properly let each other go. 

Every kiss with Harry is world-changing, world-ending. It isn’t just beyond logic and rationale, it’s beyond science, beyond physics. He’s absolutely _magic_ , and Louis’s _so_ in love with him. He thinks of him before he falls asleep and as soon as he wakes up; Harry is everything. 

Louis tells his friends that he’s met someone, and when they ask who she is, he says, _his name is Harry_ , and they say, _oh, cool_ , and that’s what it’s like to come out to Stan and Oli and Calvin, who tend to take his lead in what’s cool and what isn’t. It’s his fault they don’t think Harry Potter is lame, it’s his fault they all hate Manchester United, so it’s likely his fault they aren’t terrible homophobes, either. They’re a remote sort of supportive, where they congratulate him and slap him on the back but don’t express any interest in, like, _meeting_ Harry or anything, which is sort of for the best, since Louis can’t exactly march them all to the beach in the middle of a chilly June day and explain why his boyfriend is forever waist-deep in the sea. He _wants_ to tell the whole world, he wants _everyone_ to meet Harry, to witness his magic for themselves. He wants the universe to know that this boy is _his_ , but until Harry’s legs happen, talking about him incessantly in favour of actually parading him around and dragging him to every single one of Lottie’s recitals will have to do.

His mum is a bit harder to lie to. She of _course_ wants to meet Harry and is clearly growing suspicious of the increasingly absurd-sounding excuses that he may or may not be ripping off from Harry Potter books. She already thinks he's mad for going to the sea all the time when it’s not even properly summer yet, and her questions are starting to get dangerously close to the truth. _Well, is he a fisherman’s son? Does his family not accept him so you two have to sneak off, Romeo and Juliet style? You could bring him here, Louis, if his family doesn’t know…unless he really is a fisherman? Louis, are you seeing a much older man???_

Horrified, Louis tells her that Harry’s sixteen and just not _ready_ to meet her yet, so he begs her to be patient. _Is he a fish?_ she jokes, and Louis must blanch a bit because she purses her lips, opens her arms to him, and apologizes for giving him a hard time. _I’m just happy for you,_ she tells him, squeezing fiercely. 

It’s frustrating to lie but not frustrating enough to dampen the wild rage of how amazing the rest of it feels. He doesn’t care that he’s been reprimanded twice for coming home late and soaked to the skin, he doesn’t care that his friends don’t understand why he’s so giddy and absent-minded all the time, doodling swirly mermaid tails in the margins of his notes. He’s lost in Harry, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He’s not even anxious or ashamed about his sexuality anymore, wanting to fuck a mermaid sort of trumps wanting to fuck a boy, he supposes, so whatever qualms he had about being gay evaporate somewhere between the slope of Harry’s shoulder and the pink-orange glow of his lower-most fins. 

June turns into July, and the days get longer and brighter. It’s still always chilly by the sea, but Louis starts wearing shorts and cut-offs cuffed at the knee, starts putting his feet in the water beside Harry and yelping at the icy bite of it as it laps around his ankles. Harry kisses his achilles, wraps his strong fingers around the most delicate bit of his ankle, and threatens to pull him in. “You should swim with me sometime, when you aren’t dying or trying to save me,” he teases, thumbing into Louis’s soles. 

“It still isn’t warm enough,” Louis complains, shivering and drawing his legs up, crossing them under himself and dripping all over the dock. “I’ll freeze. You’ll end up having to rescue me again.” 

Harry frowns, tapping a scar on Louis’s knee, an old thing from the last time he ate shit on a skateboard, shiny and pink. “Can I…nevermind,” Harry stutters, pulling his hands back, clasping them in front of himself like an otter while he stays afloat with his tail. 

“Can you what?” Louis asks, reaching out and getting a fistful of Harry’s curls, tugging them gently. _Whatever it is, you can have it. You can have anything you ask for_. “Spit it out, Harold.” 

Harry flushes deeply, cheeks dimpling as he gazes up at Louis sheepishly, hair mussed across his brow. He’s lovely and too far away, so in spite of the cold, Louis extends his legs again, catching Harry between them and dragging him close, toes skimming the water. “I want to, like…fuck. It’s gonna sound dumb,” Harry mumbles, fake-struggling in the trap of Louis’s calves, continuing to (curiously) keep his hands to himself. 

“Tell me,” Louis says firmly, and as always Harry caves, getting soft and sidling up to the dock, the long, lean heat of him right there between Louis’s legs. It’s a lot to look at, and Louis keeps his eye open, even though they’re burning. 

“I wanna touch your legs. Like, _really_ touch them,” Harry eventually admits, very, very quietly, eyes downcast and nervous as he smooths his palms up the outside of Louis’s calves, thumbs digging into the divot beside the shin bone. He’s dripping glittering droplets through the golden hair as he pushes it against the grain, the sun casting the whole scene in gold. Louis shivers, sort of speechless, as Harry adds, “See? Told you it was stupid.” 

“Harry, s’not stupid...it’s _hot_ ,” Louis assures him, voice so soft and raspy around the words that even Harry can tell he isn’t kidding. “It’s, like…for you, it’s the thing that makes us different. Like your tail. Of course you’d be curious.” 

Harry relaxes, breath escaping him in a plaintive whine. “You aren’t freaked out?” 

“Nah, you can touch my legs, go on,” Louis tells him, releasing Harry to straighten and then flex his calves before settling, letting them hang off the edge of the dock, feet submerged. He feels weird and exposed, and then _dirty_ when he offers, “You can just, like. Explore.” 

Harry holds his breath, which doesn’t help with the heated, charged feeling in the air. His palms are so broad and hot as he covers Louis’s knees, fingers tucking up into the loose legs of his cargo shorts to push them up his thighs and knead the muscle, his mouth open in a silent sort of awe. Louis grits his teeth, cock definitely twitching as Harry palms up his quads, squeezing, face close enough that he can feel his exhalations. “They’re so nice,” Harry marvels, face hot and sea-sticky as he presses gentle, fluttering kisses up the inside of one thigh. “Tan. How are you so tan when there’s hardly any sun?” 

“There’s sun at my house,” Louis explains, breath hissing out nervously as Harry mouths higher. “I’m a bit inland…I play footie outside, skate with m’friends. Oh, _shit_ , Hazza, this is actually, like, turning me on a bit.” 

“Me, too,” Harry whispers, palming the back of Louis’s calves, squeezing hungrily, desperately. It’s a deliberate, certain kind of pressure, and it makes Louis feel crazy, the sort of craziness he feels every time he and Harry are snogging, and he’s so hard that he’s gonna explode. The sort of craziness that comes from being in love with someone you can’t exactly fuck, not in the way you know how to fuck, anyway. “I can see,” Harry chokes out, eyes wide and mouth so red and open as he stares between Louis’s thighs, where his cock is visibly chubbed up, tenting his shorts. “Can I touch?” 

“Fuck,” Louis gasps, because he hasn’t _thought_ about that, really. He thinks a lot about touching Harry everywhere, Harry’s body and Harry’s skin, warm and solid and grinding against him. The fact that Harry has big, lovely hands and a slick, soft mouth that Louis _knows_ can suck, if the marks all over his own chest are any indication. “Of course you can,” he scoffs fondly, this sudden novel realization. “Jesus.” 

“God, _thank you_ ,” Harry keens, face crumpling, tail swishing back and forth rhythmically, creating a choppy mess of waves all moving in frantic, opposing directions. “I’ve been wanting to, but I was too scared to ask, I wasn’t sure you—” 

“I want you to, of course I do,” Louis whimpers, unbuttoning his shorts and undoing his flies, stunned by the way that Harry’s looking down at his lap, hands all over his legs still, lips parted and drool-slick already. “M’just an idiot.” 

He doesn’t even care that he’s pulling his cock out on a fucking beach. He’s never seen anyone here except for Harry, his brain is sort of short-circuiting, and no one in their right mind could possibly resist this scenario, he’s _innocent_. Harry’s fingers tremble up the flickering plane of his quads, making fists in his cargos for a moment before he closes a hot, damp hand around Louis’s cock. 

They both make messy, wordless sounds as Harry smooths a thumb over the crown, getting Louis all sticky and wet, precum glistening in the sunlight, like the spit on Harry's lower lip, the tears welling in his eyes. “You’re fucking perfect,” he breathes, feeling Louis out, experimenting with the shift of his foreskin over the shaft as Louis twitches to full hardness, not at all believing that this is even happening. It’s so fucking surreal, Harry’s curly, dark head drifting to his thigh, his big, clumsy hand so careful as he pulls on him. “God...so gorgeous...so pink...want it in my mouth,” Harry babbles, the words coming out choppy and dirty, like he doesn’t even realize that he’s saying them. 

“You can,” Louis tells him, very nearly choking. “Or you can keep doing this. Either way, m’gonna come embarrassingly fast, sorry.” 

Harry whines unintelligibly, twisting closer and taking Louis’s cock firmly in hand, aligning it with his lips. Louis watches in stunned slow-motion as Harry then opens his mouth, sticks his tongue out, and delicately licks a bead of liquid from his slit, the softest, slipperiest, most fleeting moment. Then he closes his eyes and fits the searing heat of his mouth over the crown, and Louis whites out. 

There's the scent of the sea and the sound of the tide, but Louis forgets where he is. He’s in Harry’s sweet, sucking mouth, his burning throat, drowning in the filthy slick of his spit. That’s all there is, everything else has been reduced to static. 

He's shaking all over and his gut tightens as he digs his heels low into Harry’s back, thighs clenching beneath the pressure of Harry’s palms, which he has splayed to steady himself. It means that he's just using his _mouth_ to suck, and it’s so hot, so _raw_ that the mere _thought_ of it has Louis’s balls tightening up with how fucking _close_ he is. 

He tangles his hands in Harry’s downy, wind-tousled curls, tugging at the wet roots, trying hard to keep his hips from snapping up, from choking Harry’s sloppy, inexpert, _perfect_ mouth. He’s sucking so _well_ , making little hungry sounds and bobbing his head, tongue flicking back and forth on the underside each time he pulls up to nurse at the head. He keeps gagging himself, so there’s drool everywhere, sliding down in frothy rivulets to collect in Louis’s pubes, Harry’s eyes watering as he sucks and chokes and sucks some more. Louis would wonder if he was okay if he couldn’t already _tell_ that he was loving it, thumbs digging in, tail everywhere, water raining down onto Louis’s legs as he crushes Harry between them. 

He comes with a ragged sob, one of his arches cramping hard as he flexes his feet, bent in half over Harry, who’s still sucking, even after swallowing half and coughing up the rest. The sun and the sea materialize in a tear-bleary haze, and Louis wonders if he’ll ever breathe normally again. 

“Oh, my god,” he pants, stomach in knots, legs still trembling. “Harry,” he moans then, since it’s the only other word he really remembers. Harry pulls off, mouth so swollen that it looks like he was struck, cheeks flushed and eyes half-lidded, tears dripping down his face as he gasps. Louis thumbs the water away from his cheeks, heart pounding. “Hazza, are you alright?” he asks then, and Harry laughs shakily, sniffling. 

“That was just so good...I’ve wanted to do it for forever,” he confesses, voice reduced to tatters. He rubs his face into Louis’s thigh, tears soaking into the fabric of his cut-offs, and Louis’s throat closes up, he’s so moved. “Kept thinking about it, every time we were kissing...I could _feel_ you get turned on…wanted to touch. To taste, you know, but I thought—“ 

‘“What did you think?” Louis jokes, petting Harry’s curls, thumbing at the sea-sticky corner of his eye. “That I _wouldn’t_ want you to? Your _mouth_ , fuck, Harry. Of course I want that. I want all of you.” 

“I dunno,” Harry shrugs, eyes fluttering closed. “It’s hard, sometimes, for me to trust that you really want all of this with me. You could have a human boyfriend, someone your mum could meet, someone who’d let you, like…I dunno. Fuck him. There are limitations with me, and it makes me scared to offer what I _can_ offer because what if…what if you get bored?” His voice gets quiet and reedy at the end, a troubled line creasing his brow, prompting Louis to kiss his own thumb before reaching down to smooth that line out, wishing he could chase away every one of Harry’s uncertainties, his doubts. 

“I don’t want a human boyfriend,” he tells him, voice as firm as he can make it after coming so hard, the whole of him still shaking with aftershocks. “I want you. I’m not… _couldn’t_ be bored, Harry. I love you,” he adds, and it’s the first time that he’s said it quite like that, so raw and so plain. It’s the truth, though, and it should scare him to let something like that touch the air, but it doesn’t. Harry makes him feel like anything is possible, like the truth should always be told.

“I love you, too,” Harry says, tilting his head back to look at Louis, the sun hitting him just so, making the green of his eyes seem endless and fractal. “Like, more than I thought was even possible? Feels like it’s sort of ripping me apart, sometimes. I hope that’s not too much.” 

“No, s’not, it’s how I am, too,” Louis admits, voice soft. 

Harry smiles, and Louis smiles back, and they share that, for a moment. 

Louis wonders if he _did_ have a human boyfriend if he’d _be_ this honest, if he’d be confessing and spilling and bleeding all over this dock, keeping no secrets for himself to press safely to his heart. He gives it all to Harry, perhaps because Harry is _not_ human. It feels like dumb protocol; playing hard to get or being coy or whatever doesn’t _apply_ when their relationship is already not operating within the constraints of human rules. The real world is far away when you’re in love with someone who lives in the sea, and Louis doesn’t _care_. He wants to tell Harry everything, he wants him to _know_ what he does to him. 

After a moment, Harry sighs, pulling away from Louis to brace his arms on the edge of the dock and haul the rest of himself out of the water, tail vast and dripping and rose-gold in the sunshine, catching light and refracting it like a prism, like ice. It leaves Louis breathless, and as Harry collapses beside him, dripping, Louis realizes that his _dick_ is still out of his pants. He cleans up and tucks himself back in, flushing, as Harry watches intently, eyes dark and hungry, lips parted. “I love looking at you,” he says plainly then, before reaching out and pressing the tip of his finger into a drool spot on Louis’s shorts. “And realizing that I don’t just get to look, I can touch, too.” 

“You can,” Louis tells him, smoothing his own hand down the dip of Harry’s spine, his favourite place in the whole world. “What about me, huh? Can I touch you? Get you off, too?” he asks hopefully, palm kneading its way further down the curve of Harry’s arse, if you could call it that. Harry swats him away, giggling. 

“You already did...I came sucking you. And don’t ask questions, m’not gonna talk to you about it,” Harry adds, and Louis _gasps_ , scandalized as much as he’s suddenly turned on again, stomach plummeting. 

“ _What?!_ How? You’re _really_ not gonna tell me?” he whines, collapsing and rolling into Harry’s outstretched arms, dock-wood creaking under their shifting weight. Harry’s all wet, his tail heavy and solid as it curls around Louis’s thigh, holding him in place.

“M’not. I have to keep some mystery about me,” he chuckles, snuffing into Louis’s hair as the salty breeze blows it everywhere, fly-away strands sticking to the sweat on his brow. 

They listen to the gulls for a bit, breath getting soft and even and matched, heartbeats slowing. Then, after awhile, Louis fishes _The Chamber of Secrets_ out of his book bag and flips to where they left off, Harry’s head on his chest, rising and falling in time with his inhalations, tail swishing to block the sun so that Louis doesn’t have to squint. 

\---


	2. Chapter 2

They finish the second book and move onto the third as the summer fades into fall, days still warm even as they shorten. Louis learns more and more about merpeople, about their culture and their customs, about how those that grow legs and walk amongst his own tend to stick together, living with humanity but not necessarily becoming a part of it. In turn, he teaches Harry the rules of footie so that he can play someday, tells him about the Internet and popular memes, about the shows that everyone watches on telly at night. He reads to him and kisses the tails of his eyes whenever he cries, which is _a lot,_ especially at the end of the _Prisoner of Azkaban_ , a story that Harry finds to be insufferably sad. Louis warns him that it only gets sadder, which just makes Harry cry harder, so they take a break from reading about wizards to fool around a bit, and no one’s complaining about that. 

“So, you know, those merpeople who marry humans...the ones you told me about? How often does that actually happen?” he asks one day, hand wrist-deep in Harry’s salty curls, which are getting longer and longer, almost down to his ever-broadening shoulders. He's wondering about their future, as he often does, dreaming of a day when Harry gets to walk home with him, and it’s just struck him that he hasn’t really wondered about what that might actually _look_ like, for Harry’s family, Harry’s world. To just leave it all behind. “Is it ever a problem?” 

_“_ Sometimes,”Harry tells him, shrugging, tongue sweeping over his pretty, chapped lips. Louis steals a kiss before Harry can speak, so he’s a little dazed and dark-eyed when he pulls away and sleepily adds, “It’s not customary, maybe even taboo…s’just, like, so awkward a conversation that it rarely goes well. How many humans are going to even believe something like that? They think we’re mad…so I imagine we lie about why we need to return to the sea sometimes, which probably turns messy. And it’s not like we can have children together.”

 

“Yeah…but what if a mermaid falls in love with a human?” Louis asks, tensing up a bit. He’s lying on his stomach on the dock where Harry rests his head on folded arms, the rest of his body and tail lazily swaying in the water below. Their faces are close enough that Louis can smell the sweet huff of Harry’s breath when he breathes, and, _god,_ he wants this always, wants Harry all the time. He wants him in his _house,_ in his _bed._ He wants him without obstructions. “Because, like, for me, being in love is the more important thing. You fall in love first and make the rest work after.” 

Harry smiles a watery smile, eyes bright as he blinks slowly. “Yeah, but you’re special. Better than most humans, obviously,” he explains, and Louis’s heart clenches. “Humans…humans are rigid thinkers, Lou. You guys can barely deal with different races of humans, let alone different species. Merpeople are mostly just scared of what would happen if humans knew. It might not be safe for us. So the ones who _do_ end up knowing are entrusted with a lot.” 

“I know,” Louis sighs, reaching out and thumbing something wet off Harry’s cheek. Sea water or tears, he doesn’t know. Things get confusing out here, blending together like every colour in a sunset, orange bleeding into pink before it all melts to black. It’s what happens when you fall into something magical, reality becomes warped. “I know that, which is why I’ll never tell, yeah? I’ll protect you. I just…I fell in love first, and I’ll make the rest work after.” 

Harry freezes, eyes wide. “You don’t just love me...you’re in love with me?” he asks then, voice low and quiet as he studies Louis, whose heart is thundering in his chest, who didn’t necessarily mean to say something like that, so honest and so raw. It just…it falls out, really, because it’s been there for a long time, just growing and growing, pushing out of his gaps like spring flowers from cracked pavement, delicate and resilient all at once. 

“Of course I am,” Louis admits, because he’s come this far, he’s not going to _lie._ Plus, he doesn’t even really know how things translate with Harry, if being in love is different than regular love for a mermaid, if this distinction _means_ the same massive, heavy thing in Harry’s universe as it does in his. “I come down to the sea nearly every day to see you, you’re all I can _think_ about, I…I just want. I want you every way there is. Of course m’in love with you.” 

Harry surges forward and catches Louis’s mouth, and there’s teeth in his kiss, his hair is everywhere, sticking to Louis’s cheeks, cold and wet. Instinctively, Louis reaches out and grabs the necklace that he gave Harry in his fist, the metal angles biting into his palm as they snog heatedly for a moment. Eventually Harry falls away, panting, shaking his head, crying like he did at the end of the third book. “I’m in love with you, too...you’re all I think about, too,” he confesses, and Louis squeezes the pendant, pushes his brow into Harry’s, tasting his breath. “I want to be one of those mermaids who marries a human. I don’t care what anyone thinks, don’t care if m’judged, I don’t care. Just want you. Wanna be yours. Want you to _fuck_ me, make me yours.” 

“You _are_ mine,” Louis vows, letting go of the necklace to cup Harry’s face between his palms, to dig his thumbs into his dimples. “When you get your legs, whenever that is, if it’s tomorrow or ten years from now, I’m gonna marry you. Gonna fuck you first, but you’re all I want.” 

Harry’s voice is stuck in his throat, so they kiss it out instead, snogging until the sky gets streaked in colour, orange bleeding into pink before it all melts to black. It’s what happens when you fall into something magical. 

And as Louis walks home in darkness, steps hasty because he’s an hour later than he meant to be and freezing cold on top of that, his footsteps echo in a steady two-beat of _I’ll wait, I’ll wait._ And he means it. 

But it’s only a month or so later, when he comes to the dock on a chilly Sunday with a scarf wrapped around his nose to keep it from going numb, that Harry greets him with cheeks and eyes mischievously bright. “Guess what?” he asks, tail fanning out behind his back to playfully flick water at Louis. The drops are frigid as they land on his hands, so Louis yelps, looking scandalized. 

“What?” he shivers, rubbing the water off and getting down on his knees to press a kiss to Harry's soft, warm lips. “ _God_ , you feel so good, m’about frozen.” 

“I can feel…s’like, growing pains, in m’tail. It’s aching something awful, and there’s a divot in the middle of it...s’ _really_ tender, and you know…you know what that _means,”_ he rambles breathlessly, and Louis’s mouth falls open, his heart stops. 

“You…your legs?” he gasps, and Harry doesn’t even answer, he just nods rapidly, dimples and sea water and _brilliance,_ Louis’s whole future looking up at him, smile wide enough to split the world in two. “Oh, my god,” Louis marvels, “That’s…that’s fucking _incredible_ , Harry…how soon? Do you know?” 

“My sister got hers in, like, a quarter-moon cycle, but it can take multiple cycles...it just depends,” he explains. “But it’s _happening._ I’m...yeah. It’s happening,” he repeats, fingers nervously fiddling with his necklace, bottom lip worried between his teeth. “Are you…are you ready?” 

“Hazza,” Louis whispers, cupping Harry’s face as he leans perilously off the dock to kiss his face, his wet hair, his cheeks, his fluttering eyelids, soft and pale in the overcast grey light. “I’ve been ready since I met you.” 

—-

The next month passes by slowly, and Louis tries his best not to be impatient; after all, it's been nearly a _year,_ he can wait a bit longer. It’s hard, though, when they're tracking the changes together, and progress stagnates or halts, prompting Harry to feel self-conscious or discouraged, and the water’s too cold for Louis to get in and hold him close like he wants to, like he sometimes could over the summer. 

At some point, Harry stops letting Louis examine his tail at all, concealing it in the surf and blushing when Louis tries to bring it up. “It’s…I dunno. S’gotten weird. Things are close...it’s really tender, and my scales are falling off, and I just...I don’t want you to see it right now, okay?” he explains, twirling strands of hair nervously around his finger, making a face at Louis, who is sitting cross-legged on the dock and not above pleading. 

“I know, and I respect that, I do. But, like…Harry. Do you honestly think I wouldn’t _like_ it? That I’d be any less attracted to you, to see you shedding scales or whatever else you’re doing right now? I love you, and I love every way you are, every way you look. Even the gross bits, like when you have snot streaming from your nose when you come out of the water to kiss me.” 

Harry gasps and wipes at his nose surreptitiously, even though there’s nothing there to wipe. “I _know that_ , like, theoretically, but it’s _really_ gross, Louis. I don’t even like looking at it myself.” 

“Well, what does it look like, then?” Louis asks. “I promise, it isn’t gross. I won’t think so, anyway...I know I won’t.” 

“You _might,”_ Harry counters reproachfully. “You know those, like…very translucent fish and frogs and things? Where you can see through their skin to their organs? S’like that, but instead of seeing my organs, you can, like, see m’legs and _other stuff_ inthis silvery, slimy casing that used to be my tail. It’s ugly and not pink anymore...it just looks dead.” 

“Oh, baby,” Louis whispers, reaching forward with his hand and letting Harry rest his face in it while he tenderly thumbs over his temple. “I’m sorry...m’so sorry that your tail looks dead.” 

Harry sighs. “It’s okay. It’s…it’s not _that_ part, m’ready to let go of my tail, but…m’also, like…I’d rather you see me naked for the first time _not_ through a layer of nastiness,” he stammers in a rush. “I can’t imagine it’s very appetizing.” 

Louis smiles fondly. He’s more than a little intrigued by the _other stuff_ that Harry alluded to, and being able to suck Harry’s _cock_ and _fuck him_ are, like, very high on the list of things that Louis’s desperate to do, but he also gets it. Puberty was really weird for him, and he hated looking at his body—he didn't feel normal, let alone sexy—so if this is a sort of puberty-type transition for Harry, he understands why he might want to keep it private. “For the record, I always think that you’re appetizing,” he answers honestly, kissing the fingers of his free hand and pressing them to the space between Harry’s concerned, knit brows. “But I want you to feel happy and secure while stuff is changing. If it means I only see you from the waist up for a bit, that’s fine. Whatever you need.” 

Harry sighs again, turning his face into Louis’s palm and pressing a sloppy kiss there. “I love you,” he says, eyes fluttering closed. “Thank you for letting me be weird. And insecure. I just…I can’t wait to have a body similar to yours, so that we can actually _fuck,_ like, _really_ fuck,”he explains, voice getting hot and raw at the end, torn around the force of his longing. It’s palpable, scraping low in Louis’s gut and making him shiver. “Want you in me,” Harry adds, voice nothing but a breath, and _Jesus,_ Louis’s gonna have to wank so many times between now and whenever he gets Harry home if he has any _hope_ of lasting. 

“I want that, too,” he rasps, chest clenching as he pushes his thumb into the slick plush of Harry’s searing, sucking mouth. Harry locks eyes with him and goes down deep and hard, lips pushing up against Louis’s palm, and just _this_ feels so fucking good that Louis shudders, thinking of everything they have ahead, all the ways that he can explore Harry’s new body, all the ways that he can spoil him, take him apart. “M’gonna make it so good for you, Hazza,” he whispers. “Promise.” 

“You already make it so good for me,” Harry tells him after pulling off Louis’s thumb in a lewd slick of saliva, smiling coyly in that way he _always_ does when he’s hinting at his mysterious anatomy. Louis stopped asking about it a long time ago because it was pretty clear that this was something Harry would take to his grave. “I can’t wait to have _everything_ with you. Like, with sex but also just…in the world. Wanna see where you sleep, where you grew up, where you walk your dog. Where you go when you’re happy, when you’re sad.” 

“Well,” Louis murmurs, thumbing over Harry’s lower lip. “The last two? I come here. To be with you,” he admits, scooting forward on his bum to press a kiss to Harry’s brow. “But I’ll take you wherever you want to go, show you off to the whole world. I love it here, because you’re here, but I’m so, _so_ happy that we won’t be limited like this anymore, you know?” 

“I know,” Harry assures him. “Soon. So soon.” 

And in another four days, Harry tells Louis _Friday,_ which is just around the corner, and everything is so sudden, so _real._

Louis hardly sleeps as the days pass, his stomach full of Christmas-morning flurries, his mind full of fantasies about bony ankles and knobby knees, pale thighs, and everything else in between. Harry’s spine warm and snug against his own heartbeat while he drifts off and wakes up every morning until there are no mornings left. 

The nights creep by, and Louis waits. 

—-

He’s surrounded by salt air and fog and gulls crying overhead, but all that Louis can hear is his own heartbeat, his own footsteps. 

The beach seems to stretch on for an eternity, but he eventually makes it to the dock, feeling like he’s gonna throw up when he finally gets there, which is even less sexy than the noise coming from his muddy, squelchy wellies, but whatever. Harry’s here. He’s so close. Louis can see the dark tousle of his hair above the waves, so lovely and comforting and _home_ that even though his nerves don't drain out of him completely or anything, a strange placidity washes over his body. He takes a deep breath and pulls off his wellies so that his steps are quieter, less _wet_ -sounding as he pads down the dock to collect his boy _._ His boy and his wide, anxious-excited eyes, his white knuckles clutching the wood of their dock, his chattering teeth. “ _So_ glad you're here,” he croaks, shivering as Louis approaches. “Even if m’so nervous. I, like, can hardly swim anymore, it feels so _weird_ to have this…this split. In a place where there isn’t usually a split.” 

“Oh, god,” Louis exhales, feeling faint as he drops down to the dock to cup Harry’s cold, flushed cheeks between trembling palms. “It’s…it’s really happening!” 

“It _happened_. My tail’s gone, m’freezing, and I want…I want you to help me out of the water,” Harry begs, pouting, soaked and pitiful and shaking. He has never looked like this before; water has always been his _element,_ even with skin dripping and hair slicked to his brow, he has never looked truly cold or wet, the water usually sluicing off him as if he were coated in oil, like he had the feathers of a cormorant. It breaks Louis’s heart and excites him all at once, to know that there’s an observable difference in Harry, that there’s evidence of this long-awaited transformation. 

“Oh, love,” Louis coos, feeling Harry’s shoulders, his neck where his pulse is thudding away. “You’re all goose-pimply...you're _cold_!Never seen you cold before.” 

“S’hard to regulate, feels different,” Harry grumbles, clutching Louis like he wants to get out of the water, even as his eyes are wide and terrified and apprehensive. He’s holding back, so Louis waits, thumbing at his jaw, marveling. “So...if I get out, you're gonna see my legs. And they’re…I dunno. I don’t know if they're good or not. They don't look like _yours,_ anyway,” Harry laments, chewing his lip. “They aren’t pretty and tan.” 

“However they look, I’ll think they’re wonderful,” Louis reminds him for the hundredth time, shouldering off his rucksack and unzipping it. “Just wanna get you warm and dry, yeah? I brought towels and blankets. And clothes. We can take it as slowly as you want...I know that they’re gonna take some getting used to.” 

“To put it mildly, yes,” Harry sighs, shaking his hair out of his eyes in frustration. “They’re sort of useless, at least right now.”

“It’s okay,” Louis assures him, laying some towels down carefully on the dock so that when Harry finally gets himself together and out of the surf, he won’t have to catch his breath on a hard, cold surface. He holds his own breath then because Harry quite suddenly has a resolute expression on his face, tongue pressed into his cheek, brow furrowed as he grabs the edge of the dock. 

And then it happens. A _boy_ hauls himself out of the water, curls dripping and pale, gangly legs pinwheeling awkwardly where a tail once was. Louis wants to cry all of a sudden from dual pangs of grief and shock, but those feelings quickly disappear, leaving nothing but a wild, massive, chest-splitting surge of elation in their wake. “Ugh,” Harry mutters, arms flexing spectacularly since he’s mostly pulling his own deadweight, his bottom half heavy and clumsy and everywhere. Louis snaps out of his trance and scrambles to help, bracing himself in a low crouch so that he can hook one of his arms under Harry’s slick _thigh_ (oh, god, a thigh, he has thighs)and heave him up. 

It takes a bit of doing; Harry’s _big_ and uncoordinated, and Louis’s weak with excitement and a sudden, unexpected wave of tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, wiping them on Harry’s shoulder as they collapse on the towels together, wet and panting. “M’just. Fuck...you're just so beautiful, you feel so good.” 

“Really?” Harry scoffs, hiding his face in Louis’s hair, breath coming out in short, laboured gasps as he lies there shuddering with each inhalation, clearly exhausted. “I...I feel like I can’t possibly be even a little bit attractive right now. I feel like a child or an animal...I dunno,” he sniffles, wiping his eyes. “You’re really wonderful.” 

“You’re the most wonderful,” Louis tells him, smoothing his palms down his back to try and warm him up, stomach flip-flopping with the strange newness of seemingly never-ending skin, no scales, just softness, the curve of his spine, the dimples in his back giving way to the curve of his bum. “God, I can hardly believe this is happening.” 

“Me either, actually,” Harry agrees, flopping onto his back and exhaling. “It feels insane, like, my body isn’t even my own. I don’t even know it anymore.” 

“We’ll get to know it, though...s’gonna be alright,” Louis promises, tucking one of the blankets around Harry and folding up a towel to put under his head as a makeshift pillow, a cushion against the wood. He has a feeling they’ll be lying here for awhile as Harry recovers from treading water and holding himself against the dock for however long he had to do it while he waited for Louis. “We can just lie here until you’re ready to move. You’re worn out, so let’s not push it. Just...take your time. I’ll be here no matter what,” Louis babbles, kissing his cheeks, his shoulders, his clavicles. “ We can have a cuddle.” 

Harry sighs, shifting closer to Louis, looping one of his arms around his neck. “I’ve been _dreaming_ of cuddling you, so yes, please.” 

They lie side by side, Louis’s arms around the broad stretch of Harry’s shoulders, which continue to heave with every breath. Eventually his exhalations slow down to something closer to normal, though his heart still thunders in his chest while Louis very, very patiently presses quiet reassurances into Harry’s drying curls, not even sure if he can hear him, not caring. He just wants him to feel good and warm and safe. 

He isn’t sure how much time passes, Harry’s very quiet, still somewhat tense, and Louis…he wants him to know. That he isn’t having second thoughts, that he isn’t freaked out. “Saw your legs, by the way,” he murmurs, voice just a quiet, private huff against Harry’s brow. He doesn’t respond, so Louis swallows and continues. “And they’re fit, like I knew they’d be. All of you is fit,” he whispers as he leans in to kiss Harry, wanting so badlyto swallow him whole, to have him as close as possible all the time. 

“You can touch them if you want to,” Harry murmurs back after a moment, jaw clenched bravely, voice quiet and deep against Louis’s lips. “Or have a proper look. I want to get it over with so I can stop feeling insecure.” 

And Louis wasn’t _planning_ on getting turned on, but he can’t _help_ it, his stomach plunges, hot and low, just from Harry saying that he can _touch them._ “I can?” he asks weakly, smoothing his hand tentatively down Harry’s side, from his rib cage to his waist to his hip to the outside of his _thigh._ Hair moves under his palm, softer and finer than his own leg hair, and he shivers. 

“Yes,” Harry tells him, eyes dark. “I want you to.” 

The air changes, the atmosphere suddenly warmer, more tense. Harry isn’t shivering anymore, but he’s breathing hard again, watching Louis with wild, pupil-black eyes. Louis kicks out from under the blanket, careful to make sure that Harry stays covered for the most part. Then he sits up, heart in his throat. “I’m gonna take this off your legs, is that okay?” he asks, reaching for the jut of Harry’s knee and squeezing it gently but firmly, making small, comforting circles with his thumb over the blanket. 

“S’okay,” Harry slurs, eyes fluttering closed as Louis gathers the fabric and tentatively pushes one of his hands under it, breath catching as he grazes his fingers up the outside of Harry's brand-new calf. “Hm,” Harry smiles. “Tickles.” 

“Sorry,” Louis whispers, half-worried that he might shatter something if he speaks any louder, that he could bruise this tender white skin. He pushes the blanket up so that he can really _look,_ eyes drinking in everything, Harry’s so much _paler here_ than on his chest, a distinct tan line at his hips where there are still a few shimmering silvery scales stuck to his skin. Louis lovingly picks them away before bending to kiss the pink flush underneath. “Never seen anything so good,” he marvels, getting bolder as he kneads down Harry’s calf to his ankle, loving how _fresh_ everything seems, like the skin beneath a scab. “Does it hurt? Are you sensitive?” 

Harry’s breath shudders out of him, and he turns his face to hide it in the towel, panting fiercely again. “Yes, really sensitive,” he grits out, twitching under Louis’s hands. “But it doesn’t hurt, I don’t think. Feels weird. Like...sensational.” 

“I can stop,” Louis says, even though he isn’t sure he really _can,_ isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to stop smoothing greedy palms all over this new, strange skin. He just...he wants _all_ of Harry. And his legs are so insanely, improbably _soft,_ the hair matted down in an odd sort of film in places, like the feathers of a baby chick newly hatched from an egg. He wants to _worship_ Harry’s legs, kiss all over them, massage the muscle of his calf, which is soft and malleable from disuse. He’s fascinated and in love, and he’s also _absurdly_ turned on, aching with it even though he hasn’t even seen Harry’s _cock_ , since he’s lying on his side with the top leg bent to hide it. 

“I don’t want you to stop, it feels so good…like you’re making circulation happen. They felt sort of asleep, before, but now I feel like I’m coming back to life,” Harry explains, wincing, looking at Louis through his lashes in this way that’s so trusting and open that it makes Louis’s heart clench. 

“I’ll touch them for as long as you like,” Louis vows, bending to kiss his knee, loving how Harry whimpers a bit at the contact. “I’ll give you a proper foot rub, too. You're gonna love it, everyone loves a good foot rub.” 

“Louis,” Harry suddenly chokes out, sounding alarmed. “I’m...fuck,” he hisses. “You just...it feels crazy, feels so good.” Then, he messily lifts his bent leg and rolls onto his back, letting Louis see him _truly_ naked for the first time, prompting his soul to ascend to heaven or something. 

First off, Harry’s cock is _big_ , which Louis wasn't expecting for some reason, and it sort of takes his breath away, makes his mouth flood with hungry saliva, sudden and overwhelmed. Then, on top of that, it’s also _half-hard_ , like, thick and fat against Harry’s stomach, all flushed and delectable, as if Louis just touching Harry’s _legs_ makes him feel that _good_. Maybe it does, Louis doesn't know. Even if he _looks_ human, Harry’s anatomy technically isn’t, so who knows, maybe legs are this _thing_. “God,” Louis gasps, hand stuttering to a stop on Harry’s quadricep, squeezing reflexively. “You’re gorgeous.” 

“Keep touching my legs,” Harry says urgently, voice sort of caught and strangled in his throat, hoarse like it always is after he sucks Louis off. “I don't think I can handle it anywhere else, m’so _so,_ sensitive? But I don’t...don't want you to stop.” 

Louis is, of course, not going to stop. He shifts the blanket fully off Harry’s body and drops back down to lie beside him, kissing him hard and shifting so that they’re close but not touching, even though he badly wants to twine their legs and drag himself close enough that they could grind their cocks together. Instead, he licks into the slick, salty heat of Harry’s mouth and palms up his thighs, getting his nails in a bit and raking them down, so gentle that they wouldn't leave marks on a normal person but are likely pinking Harry up a bit. The thought makes Louis groan, makes him suck Harry’s tongue into his mouth, rough and needy. “Do you know,” he moans, thumbing into the flickering planes of muscle under the plump softness of Harry's thighs, stomach in knots, “how fucking amazing it feels to make _you_ feel good? To turn you on?” 

“You always turn me on,” Harry whimpers, like this isn't _different_ from the way things have been. It _is_ different, though, he's pressing his brow into Louis's and making so much _noise,_ little breathless moans and yelps as Louis touches him, teasing up and down his thighs, dangerously close to the thatch of hair nestled between them, dark and pretty against the white of his skin, the red of his cock. _Fuck._ Louis wants him so badly, he can hardly stand this. 

“Yeah, but not like _this..._ never heard you make sounds like this, never seen your cheeks so pink, _god,_ Harry, you’re driving me mad,” Louis tells him, fingers continuing to explore, inching down between his legs where Harry’s rubbing his thighs together, creating friction as he thrusts his hips messily into the air. Louis isn't even _thinking,_ he’s just following the grain of the hair, the skin even softer and more delicate here, and he wants to _touch_. He cannot even believe he survived a whole year of messing around with Harry, knowing that he was getting off but not knowing _how,_ not being able to watch it happen, to track Harry's arousal in real time, at least in a way he could understand. This is insane, and he’s already beside himself, so when he opens his palm on the tender-smooth plane of Harry’s inner thigh in its perfect layer of downy hair, and Harry _cries out,_ he just about comes right fucking there, without being touched. “Oh, my god, baby,” he groans, squeezing gently. “Is that good? Or too much?” 

“It’s _so_ good, it feels _crazy_ , don't stop _,”_ Harry sobs, shifting his legs together, drool shining on his lips. “Fuck, oh, my god, don’t stop, don’t stop.” 

Louis pushes Harry’s legs open, determined to see what’s going on, to make Harry feel _amazing,_ to examine the whole thing closely to make sure that he’s doing it right, that he’s being careful. Louis hasn't had _proper sex_ before, not like this, and someone else might not consider this proper sex, but for them, it is, he thinks. After all, he doesn’t quite know how Harry’s body works or will work in the future, and if this feels good, it’s sex. It’s real, and he’s going to bring Harry off perfectly, even it it means just stroking the inside of his thighs until he comes all over this stomach. _God,_ just the thought of it is making Louis’s gut twist up, his cock twitch in his joggers. Everything with Harry, every little thing, is _so_ insanely good that he feels like he’s incinerating. 

“Good?” he asks again, petting Harry’s hair, kissing down his chest, sucking his pretty, puffy nipples, making him squirm and writhe and hiss right there on the dock where they’ve spent so many afternoons _dreaming_ of this, longing for it. 

“Amazingly good,” Harry whines, rolling his hips, bucking in the air gracelessly. “I’ve…there’s never _been_ a between before? Like, just...just having my legs spread, split like this…,” he stops to gasp again, cock blurting out precum, getting his shuddering abdominals all sticky and glistening. “Feels like being fucked, like you’re in me.” 

Louis just about dies. 

But then he has an idea, an idea so fucking hot that his brain whites out entirely, and he has to press his brow to Harry's sternum and listen to his speeding heart a few moments before he can take a deep breath and actually speak. “Hazza…I could…do you want me to sort of, like, fuck you? Without actually fucking you? Because I could fuck you right here,” he explains, smoothing his hand over that soft, soft inner plane of his thigh, knuckles brushing up against the underside of his sac without meaning to. “Put you on your side and get behind you and get my cock right here between your legs. I could get us off that way, if you wanted me to.” 

Harry starts sobbing in earnest, hands all over Louis’s face, fingers carding through his hair one after the other, snagging frantically. “Please, please,” he manages to get out. “I…fuck. Need that so fucking badly. Can’t wait another second for it.” 

Louis’s trembling as he gets up on all fours and kisses Harry blind, thumbs the tears from his cheeks, the snot from his upper lip, his heart thundering so hard that he can feel it drown out the crash of the _tide._ This is going to happen, he’s going to _fuck_ Harry’s thighs, he just has to hold on long enough to actually make it happen. “Get on your side, back to me,” he orders gently, guiding Harry into place, thinking that this is so _surreal,_ to have the sea watching them. But at the same time, _of course_ they’re going to fuck on this goddamned dock…he doesn’t know why he thought either of them would last until they made it back to his after longing so deeply to be _close,_ to hold one another, to belong together, exist in the same world. It seems fitting, in some ways, that it’s happening here. 

He fumbles with his joggers and gets them down around his hips, stunned at the perfect, smooth curve of Harry’s bum as he feels it, in his palm first, then against the fever-hot burn of his cock, nestled there between his cheeks for a moment as he spoons Harry, holds him close, kisses all over his shoulder blades and the back of his neck. “You ready?” he whispers, lips against the shell of his ear, and Harry nods, backing into him, rubbing himself against Louis’s erection greedily. 

“Fuck me,” he whispers back, the most dirty-perfect thing Louis has ever heard. “Please.” 

Louis takes his cock in hand and lines himself up, pushing between the hot, soft squeeze of Harry’s thighs, where he’s sweat-damp, untouched. 

Harry tenses up before he bucks his hips, and the friction is so insane that Louis groans involuntarily, mouth open and drooling on Harry’s scapula. “Oh, god, so perfect, best thing I ever felt,” Louis babbles, thrusting, vision exploding with static at the nervy drag. “You’re so tight...so warm.” 

“Louis, Lou,” Harry hiccups, bracing himself on the dock with one wide palm, rolling a bit onto his stomach as Louis fucks between his thighs, making him rock with the force of it, because even though he's being gentle, Harry’s so _pliant,_ so responsive. “God. _You_ feel perfect, like you’re in me,” he slurs, spit dripping down onto the towel beneath them. 

Louis can’t believe that Harry’s _thighs_ feel this good. They’re just thighs, they shouldn’t be this amazing, but they _are._ The softest, warmest, sexiest things he’s ever touched with his hands and now with his _cock,_ his cock, which is nudging against Harry’s balls every time Louis pushes back into him, making Harry yelp and roll his hips lewdly. Every time he does it, Harry squeezes his thighs tighter together, which, in turn, squeezes Louis’s cock where it’s trapped, and it isn’t _that_ much pressure, but with everything else, the way that Harry’s skin smells, the feral, strangled sounds that he's making, it’s enough to push Louis so _close. “_ Hazza, baby,” he murmurs, licking sweat from his back, loving the brine and iron taste of him. “Want you to come before me…can you..are you close?” 

“Yeah,” Harry mewls, reaching behind himself and fumbling for Louis, clumsy palm cuffing his neck, his ear, pulling him closer. “Just...touch me,” he begs, grabbing Louis’s hand where it’s clamped onto his own waist and dragging it up his chest, over the wild flutter of his heart. “Not my cock but everywhere else...want you to touch me, need to know that you’re _real.”_

 _“_ I’m real, m’real, never going anywhere, gonna fuck you every way there is for the rest of forever,” Louis hisses, smoothing his hand over Harry’s chest, pinching his nipples, cupping his throat, sliding up to push two fingers into Harry’s mouth, gasping at the way he greedily sucks, not caring if there's sand beneath Louis’s nails, not caring at all. His tongue is plush and hot and perfect, and Louis feels the vibration of a warning groan, followed by a wild graze of teeth against knuckle, so he pulls his fingers out to _hear_ him, to hear the sound of Harry finally _coming_ in a way that he can understand. “God, fuck, listen to you,” Louis praises, flattening a hand on Harry's stomach so that he can feel the ribbons of come land on his skin, searing hot, and _Jesus,_ there's so _much_ of it, it feels like Harry comes for _ages._

 _“Louis,”_ Harry whimpers amid his aftershocks, thighs still flexing against Louis’s shaft, holding him tight. “Want you to keep fucking me there...want you to come, there, between m’legs. On my thighs.” 

“Promise,” Louis tells him, kissing his spine and continuing to ride him, thrusting into that sweaty and precum-sticky pocket of heat, pulling back enough so that he can watch the way his cock looks nestled up between Harry’s peachy thighs, disappearing between them before he locks up and moans, coming with the tip trapped, painting Harry’s new, pale skin an even whiter white. 

Harry cries with it, like it’s the best thing he’s ever had, like just feeling _Louis_ lose himself there is as good as coming all over again. “Fuck, yes, thank you,” he murmurs, dipping his trembling fingers down and collecting a mixture of their come before curiously licking it off, eyes fluttering closed at the taste of himself, of Louis on him. Louis watches in his tear-hazy peripheral vision and thinks, _you’re magical, you’re magic itself,_ before rolling onto his back and withdrawing from that maddening heat. “Christ,” is what he manages to say, staring up at the grey sky, smelling salt and hearing the sea as if for the first time, as if he's being reborn. “We just…we just fucked on your dock. All my plans for a romantic deflowering in my bed. Ruined.”

Harry cracks up at that, the sort of frantic, hysterical laughter that comes from a massive adrenaline surge. He sounds crazy, and Louis loves him, loves the sound of his wild, uncontrollable hyena yelp. “We didn't even…just. _Fuck_ , I came before I even _walked._ That’s gotta be a merperson record or something, I ought to get recognition for that, yeah?” he giggles, heaving himself up before collapsing down next to Louis again bonelessly, arm flung across the rise and fall of his chest. “Wow.” 

“So, I made you feel good?” Louis asks as he pulls his joggers back up over his arse, even though he knows the answer from the way that Harry’s smiling, big and open like something broken into pieces, from the way that his body is still trembling with little aftershocks, flinching as Louis touches him, like he’s still so sensitive, like Louis is _seismic._

“Better than I ever thought I could feel. I mean, getting myself off while you fuck my mouth has been…great. Better than great. But, like, feeling you like this, _in_ me…between my _legs,”_ he marvels, like it’s the dirtiest and most exciting thing that he can imagine. “Amazing.” 

The bright wild green of his eyes steals every word Louis might have to say, so he kisses him instead of speaking, deep and thorough and hot. It’s a kiss that says _you’re amazing, actually, this is amazing, I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life making you this happy._ When he pulls away, there are tears on Harry’s cheeks, clotting his lashes, and Louis kisses those up, too. Then he uses one of the towels to carefully wipe the come from Harry’s stomach, from his glorious thighs, soft and a bit swollen under his fingertips, flushed from friction. It’s insanely dirty, obscene, really, to see such a new, intimate place on Harry all come-sticky and pink from _him,_ from his cock. _Jesus._ He kisses his fingers and presses them to the puffy curve, hardly able to wait to kiss him there for real, to spend hours teasing his tongue all over the inside of Harry’s thighs, nipping them, sucking marks into the white skin. “I’ve never really noticed guys’ thighs before, as, like, an attractive sort of thing, but I’m pretty obsessed with yours. Same way I was obsessed with your tail. You’re a….what do they call them…a _tastemaker._ You make my tastes.” 

Harry blushes, settling back under the blanket, like he’s suddenly shy about his new body again, his soft cock shrinking back into his foreskin. “I’m lucky, then. Can’t imagine that many humans would be so patient with this stuff, let alone, be, like…into it.” 

“Lucky you found the guy with a mermaid fetish,” Louis shrugs. “Though it’s more of an all-around Harry fetish, if I’m honest...doesn’t depend on the tail bit.” 

“That’s not a _fetish,”_ Harry snorts, reaching for Louis’s hand and lacing their fingers together before kissing Louis’s palm, soft and lingering, with his big lush lips. “I think that's just called being in love...think you’re in love with me.” 

Louis _feels_ his face get soft, _feels_ his heart leap up into his throat, nothing but flutters. “I’m so fucking in love with you,” he confesses as he lies down next to Harry again, their knees brushing intimately under the blanket as waves lap at the dock. “Can’t believe you’re mine.” 

Harry smiles, legs stirring and shifting a bit with involuntary twitches. Louis inches forward and lays one of his legs over Harry’s, hoping the pressure is enough to soothe him to stillness. He knows it must be so strange, still, to have two limbs where there was once only one. 

“So...you ready to meet my mum?” he asks gently, tracing down the curve of Harry’s cheek, marveling at the flush still lingering there. “I’ve been preparing her all week, telling her not to be weird, but she’s gonna be weird anyway. Expect one hundred ill-timed, mid-sentence hugs and lots of fussing over your clothes. Those are her expert moves.” 

Harry laughs, shaking his head. “M’sure she’s lovely...can’t _wait_ to meet your mum,” he adds, as the soft, easy expression on his face changes a bit, becomes thoughtful. “How…how are we gonna address the whole legs thing, though? It’ll take me a bit of time before I know how to use them properly. She might think it’s odd that I can’t walk.”

“My mum is an angel, Harold, she won’t draw attention to something like that. There are humans who can’t walk either, you know. I’ll tell her that you’re recovering from an accident or something, plus I have these adjustable crutches from when I broke me leg learning to skate in year six. We can teach you how to use those.” 

“Okay,” Harry says quietly, snuggling closer to Louis, trying to hide his smile and failing. “I love that you’ve thought of everything. Like, this is real for you, too, you’re actually making sure that I fit into your life.” 

‘“You better fit into my life,” Louis mutters, pushing his face into Harry’s hair, wondering what it’ll smell like once he’s lived out of the water for awhile, if the salt and fog scent of him will fade into something new, or if he’ll always smell like he came from the sea. “I mean, I’ve been making time to trek out to this godforsaken little cove every other day for a _year,_ having you home is actually going to make it _easier._ We won’t have a long-distance relationship anymore.” 

“I’m just…I’m just so grateful. Not that many merpeople get to transition into living above water so smoothly? Like, it takes years, sometimes, for us to build a network. I’ve heard horror stories…like my aunt? She lived months in a _cave_ off the coast of Brighton, learning to walk, eating _kelp_ , missing the sea, and being really sad and lonely. Luckily, we had enough family living in England that by the time my sister grew legs, she was able to just move in with them. But not everyone has that, and hardly _ever_ do people have perfect human boyfriends who fuck them five minutes after pulling them out of the water. Or who introduce them to their mums,” he beams, leaning in and kissing the corner of Louis's mouth. “So, thank you.” 

“Literally, it’s my pleasure,” Louis jokes, before softening up again, fitting their bodies closer. “I can’t wait to have you all the time and not just here. So really, s’not a chore, not at all. It’s, like, the thing I want most in the world.” 

Harry kisses him, and Louis’s about to deepen it into a proper snog when Harry pulls away, taking a deep breath. “Okay,” he says, pursing his lips. “M’ready to try and walk, if you’re ready to try and help me. It could be a serious endeavor, could take all day, so we should probably get started now, while we still have daylight.”

 

Louis squeezes Harry's hand before grabbing his rucksack and dragging it between them, dumping out the clothes he brought. “ _Of course_ I’m ready, let’s get you home.” 

“Let’s get me to _your house,”_ Harry corrects, sitting up gingerly, dimples deep and lovely on his cheeks. “You’re here, so m’already home.”

And Louis grins, feeling as vast and important and eternal as the sea.


End file.
